In making his call, Cardoso unveiled results of a Kennametal commissioned survey that highlighted the public’s lack of understanding of opportunities in manufacturing careers.

What do you see as the cause of this perception gap?

I am sure there are a lot of drivers. The world is changing very fast and we all have a tendency to think of manufacturing as 20 to 30 years ago ... (when) the reality is manufacturing today is very automated and it has state-of-the-art technology, and is very clean and very safe and is as good an environment as any other environment you can find.

The second major driver is the fact that people believe what they read in the paper every day that manufacturing jobs are being moved outside the U.S., and that leads to the perception that there isn’t the predominate manufacturing going on.

How do you propose the industry close that gap?

We need industry, we need government and we need the schools, K-12 schools, to be a part of the whole thing and we need the press. I think, too often, the press paints manufacturing with a bad brush and I don’t think that is necessarily true or fair.

Manufacturers haven’t done enough to promote to educators and actually to do something about the skills gaps that we have. (Kennametal) spends 60 percent of our foundation into education and technology type grants to promote and get people to join manufacturing/engineering.

Manufacturers need to work with schools with all levels to promote this and put some time, and, quite honestly, some funds into that.

What sort of reactions are you getting from your peers when you make this call to action?

Most of the CEOs I talk to about this subject are doing something in one form or another.

I think my objective is, how do we take this and make it available, take lessons learned and better practices, and become more effective at how to do this thing and how to unify all of this effort.

How do you get beyond the mentality of some small manufacturers that shun the spotlight for fear of competition?

We do run into it. But, the best thing to overcome this is to encourage those smaller manufacturers to either partner with larger groups or companies.

What we are doing at Kennametal is, we are willing and want to share what we are doing because, ultimately, the majority of manufacturing resides in small business. I think one of the things we need to do as (the National Association of Manufacturers), or MAPI, or as the Small Business Administration, we need to put our arms around those small companies and help them.

With news like Boeing’s recent announcement on closing a Kansas plant and Alcoa curtailing capacity, how do you combat the idea that manufacturing jobs are not stable?

I think we have a number of challenges as a country and as manufacturers. It’s a catch-22.

You start with the idea of a free market and it means anyone can compete here. The consumer ultimately makes the decision whether they buy local. Under that concept ... that makes us compete with everyone else in the world. We, as U.S. manufacturers, need to become competitive.

There are a number of things we can do.

No. 1 is, I think there needs to be regulations but we need to have some common sense regulations. ... We need to truly understand the benefit versus the cost every time we pass legislation that is adverse to manufacturers.

No.2 is, we need to promote our trade. Everybody comes here and has the opportunity to sell here, and other countries’ governments support those companies to sell here. We need to have the same environment here. We have what I call an obsolete trade environment.

What does Kennametal’s hiring situation look like?

We have added more than 200 jobs in the U.S. and we have another 300 job openings even as we speak, and, in an environment with unemployment at 8.5 percent, it still takes as long to hire today as in 2008.

It’s something other than jobs available — the reality is the lead time to fill a position in Kennametal is the same as at the peak (of the economy). It’s a critical lack of skills.

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